mlhouse

Quality pitching is going to put the ball closer to the strike zone more often and they are going to get the benefits of the umpire's calls more often, which is another factor that needs to be controlled across these studies. I also have seen pitch framing studies were they narrow the run factor by count: obviously a created strike on a x-2 count has a huge value vs. some other counts and they built data on how a strike projection leads to runs. I still think the number is inflated, but it is an argument I really don't think is all that important because even using their data I think pitch framing is not all that important. If you have a catcher that can call a great game, work with your ptichers, control the running game, and is a good pitch framer then that is a positive. If you throw a rock into your pool we know that it increases the water level even if you cannot measure it. Regardless, my biggest issue with the Castro signing is that instead of giving Mitch Garver the opportunity to prove himself, they got a poor hitting catcher that may or may not be able to make a contribution with his glove (and what is the net impact of his offense-defense?). I go with Garver and see if he can hit. If he can't then we would ahve to find alternatives, and I think you can find guys like Castro anytime you want.

LOL at the math. Maybe you have to "believe" the math, I don't. I outlined why I think that the statistic is weak: it does not control for the quality of pitching staff and the estimate for how many runs a single strike saves. You can make a counter argument, or not but just because it has 'math' and it is on "interwebs" does not make it "settled science".

Just to follow up on some evidence about the relationship between pitch framing and quality of pitching staff. Consider Fransisco Cervelli. In 2015 as the catcher for the Pirates he led MLB in pitch framing, creating 1.79 strikes/game and saving 26.7 runs over the course of the season as the Pirates catcher. In 2015, the Pirates had the 2nd best ERA in baseball with a 3.21 team ERA. However, in 2016, Cervelli only created 0.83 strikes/game and saved 9.9 runs. He was still on the same team, but in 2016 the Pirates pitching staff was the 18th best in MLB with a 4.21 ERA. I am sure that there is some real skill in pitch framing and that catchers like Ryan Doumat (whom is used almost as a standard for bad catching) will always be bad because of their bad form, when you have a statistical measure that has such variance it is probably not a good thing to base signing decisions on. The other thing that worries me about the Castro signing is how the balls/strikes works teh other way. For a good part of his career teh Astros were at least a competitive team. He was a poor hitter with a little pop in his bat. But, moving the the doormat Twins when the ball/strike calls work AGAINST him at the plate does he have enough skill to overcome that. When you are a career .699 OPS and an extra strike called is worth .113 runs, it doesnt take much to impact your hitting into below replacement level. I hope I am wrong and that Castro's other skills behind the plate help the Twins staff get more consistent.

I personally am very skeptical of the "pitch framing" analysis. Two things are really suspect in the analysis. 1. I think it is impossible to truly isolate pitcher quality in these measures. Without being able to isolate out the impact of pitching staffs it is almost impossible to compare the relative values of "pitch framing". Even more important, what is called a strike for top level pitchers is going to be different than what is called a strike for a Twins pitcher or another member of a poor pitching staff. 2. I am also highly skeptical of the run value these analysis assign to each incremental strike. The .113 run/strike seems to be to high of a value. I am not going to say that it is impossible, it just seems that it could be a number that is significantly exaggerated. And this is very believable. Consider what it takes to measure every pitch a catcher catches, evaluate if it is a true strike/ball, and then compile all that info. You are going to want it t be important!!!. But even if we assume that the value of an incremental strike is .113 runs/strike, Jason Castro's pitch framing created 0.92 strikes/game. At .113 runs/strike that is 0.10 runs per game. It might be "real", but it is almost immaterial within the error levels of a normal baseball game.

1. A rebuilding team (that knows what htey are doing) doesn't put their prospects in the majors out of desperation, they put them there to develop and evaluate them. They realize that it is far better for your future competitiveness to take your lumps right now, rather than play replacement level baseball players and take them anyways. Let Kent Hrbek and Gary Gaetti make the mistakes in the year that you are going to lose 102 ball games rather than have them make those same mistakes later. 2. In other words, the lack of depth isn't the problem, it is how you attempt to solve the depth problems. Why the Twins prefer to play guys like Shane Robinson and Logan Schaffer over their own prospects is a true answer for why this rebuilding is going so badly. One case in point I bring up is Adam Brett Walker. I doubt that Walker was ever going to be a player that made it at the major league level. He had huge problems in making contact that almost certainly would get worse at the MLB level. But the Twins never gave him a chance. Not a single PA with the major league team despite the fact that teh kid hit 25+ home runs at every level of our minor league system and had a career minor league OPS of .796. We found PA for Logan Schafer, a 29 year old journey man's journey man with a career .611 OPS and 32 total minor league home runsin 2500 minor league PAs. We found room in 2015 for Jordan Schafer, a career major league .615 OPS and 40 minor league home runs in 2200 minor league PAs and lest we forget Shane Robinson, a 30 year old guy with a career .595 MLB OPS and 24 minor league home runs in 2048 career minor league PA (if you are totalling their home run count, in over 6000 minor league PAs these guys dont combined do not have many minor league home runs as Walker). Maybe Walker would have swung and missed badly at every pitch he saw, but we never gave him a chance. 3. Of course Berrios wasn't ready. Frank VIola wasnt ready either. The difference is that in 1982 the Twins management REALIZED that being ready wasn't today wasn't what was important, and they had the patience and understanding to work with the young player until HE WAS READY. They gave a "not ready" Viola 340 innings at the major league level before he became Frank Viola. 4. Speaking specifically at your comparison of Berrios and Viola, what really should be the most troubling aspect is your last comment. It really is an indictment of the Twins minor league development. Sure, Viola was a college pitcher when the Twins drafted him versus a high schooler from Puerto Rico, but he made his MLB debut at the age of 22 just as Berrios did. But Viola only pitched 97 innings in AA during the 1981 (his draft year) and 58 innings in AAA in 1982 before he was called up for the Twins forever. Berrios on the other hand has spent the bulk of 5 years in the Twins minor league program that you are basically saying is incompetent compared to a college program in developing major league pitching. I agree with this because internally developed minor league prospects arrive after years of methodical movement through the minor leagues with a severe lack of readiness for playing in the major leagues. 5. A player who unexpectedly proves this is Brian Dozier. Our modern day Dozier is nothing like the college infielder we drafted in the 8th round. Looking at his minor league statistics, the guy only hit 16 minor league home runs in 4 years (1.1% of ABs). But then, he only struck out 184 times (13.1%). If Dozier would have continued the minor league version of Brian Dozier he would have been a .600 OPS guy that washed out a long time ago. Instead, he compeletely changed his approach to the plate and became pull hitting threat and has hit home runs in 4.3% of his ABs (almost 4 times higher than his minor league level) while striking out significantly more (21.8%). Dozier is a significant player because he is going to be about the only player to make his pro debut between 2011 and 2015 that will have any impact going forward for the Twins. When you consider that except for the fluke of 2015, the Twins have lost more than 90 games in every season since 2011, that is sad, sad tale of organizational inadequacy. (Maybe Gibson is on that list?????). 6. And a significant amount of the problems the Twins have had in developing players is the lack of patience. Aaron Hicks makes a mistake....damn it Shane Robinson is my starting CF. It was as if they just simply could not put up with the youth, that they did not want to risk using young players, and almost had a comfort level of playing rejects like Robinson and Clete Thomas on the field so that whatever issues there was with their drafted/minor league developed players would not be in the spotlight. 7. As I stated before, one of the main reasons to rapidly move your players in a rebuilding organization is to be able to quickly evaluate them and find the keepers and the goners. But, that doesn't mean that all the failed players will never make it. One of my favorite players Jim Eisenreich eventually made it back to the major leagues after he conquered his issues. I also think that there are a handful of players that in special circumstances should take a slower route to the majors. I would have moved Stephen Gonsleves through the minor leagues to the majors by now, but I would have moved Kohl Stewart slower to work on his secondary pitches and get more baseball experience. 8. The record and these arguments more than demonstrate that the approach that the Twins management attempted has failed. And that is why Terry Ryan was fired this past season, although the current management seems to be following in with the same approach at the margin I think they need time to develop their own system throughout the organization.

BS. About the only aspect of player development that has changed is financial and that doesn't impact player development much. How the teams draft, how they assign teams to minor leagues, the minor league structure are have all remained consistent for decades with the minor tweak that teams have added some structure to the very low minors and pathways to bring in very, very young Hispanic players from Central America into professional baseball. Another difference is that the talent today is obviusuly better, but that is all relative. It is virtually impossible to argue with someone who simply makes a statement with a stupid analogy and no supporting evidence. But the process of rebuilding a "small market" team is the same today as it was in 1982. You get your prospects up and develop them at the major league level. How else can your fully evaluate them? The prospects that fail, you move on from (Jim Eisenriech, Lenny Faedo, Brad Havens, Dave Engle, Randy Johnson) , and you bring up the next prospect (Kirby Puckett, Greg Gagne, Randy Bush). Eventually your form a core of players that has the potential to be a succesful team over the long run (Hrbek, Gaetti, Brunansky, Puckett, Viola, Gagne, Bush). You might not be able to fill all of the gaps, but if your scouting and development is good enough you only need to bring in a few players to plug these holes (Roy Smalley, Bert Blyleven, Jeff Reardon, Al Newman, Juan Berrenger). But these steps must be made bravely and competently. The Twins have not done this and their record of futility speaks for this fact.

Totally disagree. Development CAN take place on the major league level and for rebuildign teams it must. Frank Viola was hammered in his first two seasons in MLB, posting ERAs of 5.21 and 5.49. But the rebuilding Twins handed him the ball for 126 innings in his first stint and 210 in his first full year in the majors and never once sent him back to the minors even though his H/9 > 10. And Viola was a 22 year old pitcher with just 155 minor league innings. IF Viola was a current Twins prospect he would have pitched spent 1981, his draft year at Elizabethton with perhaps a late season callup to Cedar Rapids. 1982, as a 22 year old he would have pitched most of the season in A-, again with maybe a callup to A+ Ft. Myers. Likewise, 23 year old AA and maybe a call up if the team was doing terrible but since the Twins standard is that a prospect needs to come up and dominate MLB hitters, with his 5+ ERA they had some old mediocrity to pitch instead and would have bounced him back and forth between AAA and the majors. He would not have been established with the current Twins process until he was 25 years old (see Kyle Gibson). But by the time Frank Viola was 25 he had already pitched back to back 18 win seasons. One of the problems with the Twins approach is that you need to give your prospects an opportunity to fail. If Berrios continues to demonstrate that he cannot get major league hitters out, then he is not a prospect, and the only way he can demonstrate this fact is at the major league level. So, even if he has plus 5.00 ERA you continue to hand him the ball and pitch. Eventually, the failure would become apparent and you do something that is very important to a rebuilding team, YOU MOVE ON FROM THE PROSPECT. This is incredibly important because if you do not do this you will not EVER develop a team from your rebuild. You will just flux back and forth between these prospects and replacement level players without ever getting the answers. Again, the 1982 Twins rebuild is the perfect demonstration. The original Twins CF was Jim Eisenreich. The highest level Eisenreich played in the Twins minor league system was A-, he had 298 PAs in Rookie ball (still was Elizabethton in 1980) and a full season at A- in 1981, 603 PAs total including 18 in a late season move to A- in 1980. But in 1982 he was the Twins starting centerfielder. To put this in persective, this would be like starting Zach Granite as our starting CF this season for the Twins and Granite would have actually had significanty more minor league playing tiem and would be more than a year older than Eisenreich/ Unfortunately for Jim his career with the Twins did not work out for health reasons, but within two years the Twins called up another CF that was pretty good. If the Twins would have done the methodical process of (poorly) developing their minor league prospects, Eisenreich would not ahve reached the Twins for at least another or two, and the prospect that DID PAN OUT, would have been delayed even longer. Think about where Kirby Puckett would be if he was a current Twins draft choice? In 1982 he was our first round pick and played in Rk. In 1983 he was moved to A+ as a 23 year old. In 1984 he started the season in AAA, but was only hitting .264 with a .619 OPS when he was called up. Do you think the current Twins management has him skipping from Rookie to A+ and then to AAA, and then CALLS HIM UP WITH A .619 OPS? And as great as his debut was, Kriby only had a .655 OPS for the Twins in 1984. Again, he would have moved one station at a time, and would have been available for the Twins debut around 1986-87. Again, rebuilding is simple. GET YOUR PROSPECTS UP. REALIZE YOU ARE GOING TO LOSE. FIND A MANGEMENT TEAM THAT IS PATIENT WITH YOUNG PLAYERS (like Billy Gardner from the 1982 Twins). KEEP PLAYING THEM UNTIL THEY PROVE THEY CANNOT PLAY. When Lenny Faedo, the 1982 starting Twins SS proved he wasn't good enough, they had another prospect in Greg Gagne available. IF THEY CANNOT PLAY, FIND SOMEONE ELSE. For a team liek the Twins, the only way to get into contention is to rebuild and that means losing lots of ball games. Unfortunately, our management decided to lose ball games without developing the players so even after 6 years we are still looking at more rebuilding to come.

What team moral? They lost 103 games............as far as "not shown any competence", I notice you edited out Berrios' ERA from AAA being under 2.60 over 150 total innings? WHat more does he have to prove in AAA or any level of the minors? If Berrios is truly not ready for the major leagues we need to fully examine our farm system and how it develops players. His career minor league ERA is 2.89 and career K/9 is 9.6. At every level he has pitched in he has been at least 2 years younger than his competition (although I think these measures are a little bit skewed). While for the Twins he may have been brought up quickly, he has had a pretty much stepwise progression through the minors. So, where is the problem? YOu could also extend this to Twins hitting prospects who also seem to require a lot of adjustment to be able to hit major league pitching, and seem to also lack a lot of fundamentals.

Only in the Twins organization would pitchers like Duffey and Mejia block their top pitching prospect.

The Twins management seems to just search for rationales for why to send their prospects back to the minor leagues. Seriously, we have been in this "rebuild" for years upon years. Since 2011 we have lost 99, 96, 96, 92 , 79, and 103 baseball games, and all the while our management has essentially pretended were were some sort of contender and plugging in old has beens to perform mediocre at best, rather than LOSE WITH OUR PROSPECTS. WHat more does JJ Berios and JT Chargois have to prove at the AAA level? Berrios as a 21 year old had a 2.62 ERA over 75 innings at AAA. He followed that up with 2.51 ERA over 111 innings as a 22 year old before the Twins decided "Hey we should bring him up." He struggles so the braintrust at the top loses all confidence in him and would rather pitch Phil Hughes for a 100 innings before he blows his elbow out rather than give Berrios teh experience. The same holds true with Chargois. Chargois is 26 years old. I get that the arm injuries severely slowed down his career path, but what more do you want to see him do in AAA? Have a sub 1.00 ERA and K/9 > 11? YOu put Berrios in the starting rotation and Chargois as at least your set up man from day 1 this season, AND YOU STICK WITH THEM. THAT IS HOW YOU BUILD YOUR TEAM FOR THE FUTURE. LOSE NOW, LET THE PROSPECTS GET EXPERIENCE, SORT OUT THE GOOD ONES FROM THE BAD. The way this is going, it will be another 6 years of 90+ losses before they can straighten this out.

Here is the problem. WHile I think Terry Ryan and winning a division championship is somewhat overrated, during those years of having Mauer and Mourneau and Johan Santana at their peaks if the management of the team would have put in $15 - 25 million more in salary they might have been real contenders. While they won the AL Central Division 6 times from 2002 through 2010, they only won 6 playoff games and just one playoff series in those 6 appearances. If you elimnate their first Central championship in 2002, they were beat 3-1 in 2003, 3-1 in 2004, and swept 3-0 in their next three appearances (2006, 2009, 2010). As pointed out, those 6 division championships were weak. Only twice, 2006 and 2010 were the Twins amongst the top 3 in the AL (2nd in 2006, 3 in 2010). If they would have been outside of the Central Division, their record would have only won another division title, the West in 2006 and 2010, and only once was their record better than the wild card finisher, 2006. I think Ryan did a good job with the budget he had. He made some shrewd moves in Rule 5, made some solid trades, and drafted some solid players. The Twins had the prospects to make more trades that could have brought the missing pieces if the team wuld have been willing to spend the money. They werent and I think that was totally unfair to the Twins fans.

Chris Gimenez, because giving ABs to 34 year old catcher with a career .632 OPS is a much better utilization of them than trying to get your prospect catcher some opportunity in the big leagues. I am sure that the Twins plan to bring Mitch Garver up when he is about 30 years old.

Yeah good article Seth and best wishes to Wimmers.

Bill James has demonstrated that your best OBP guys should lead off and hit 4th and that your expected runs from an inning skyrocket if you get the leadoff guy on base. James also has demonstrated that most major league managers don't understand the 3rd spot in the order, believing that spot should be reserved for your premier hitter, when in fact, it is almost the opposite. Instead, it should be the spot you slip your power hitting guy that strikes out a lot (unless you aint got those). I think the Twins lineup should be: 1. Mauer/Grossman Let them work the pitchers deep into counts and get on base. They have enough power to keep the pitchers honest. 2. Polanco 3. Dozier 4, Sano 5. Kepler 6. DH Platoon 7. Rosario 8. Casto 9. Buxton Hopefully he develops the OBP to move to the top of the order.

It isn't inaccurate at all and by the 7th inning almost every player on the field for "Team USA" was a Twin minor league player as well as for the Twins and it became a scrimmage. While this happens in all Spring Training games, and maybe since I am a full time Fort Myers Beach resident it isn't that big of a deal to be outside in March, I have always questioned the excitement of spring training games for the average fan. Joe Mauer and Justin Mourneau take an at bat or two, and then they walk down the left field foul line back to the lockers while players the casual fan has never heard of play. Hammond Field is a nice facility and the weather is nice, but at $10 parking, $28 a ticket, and $7.75/beer they aint that nice.

Was at the game. Calling it a Twins vs. USA team was pretty much fraud, as most of the major league players were out of the game by the 4th inning or so, and the game then devolved into essentially a scrimamge between Twins minor league players.

The Twins would rather have 30+ year old replacement level players on their roster and lose 95+ games than their own prospects. This has been a tradition throughout this entire rebuilding phase. You have to get your players up to the big leagues, even if "they arent ready" to evaluate and develop them. Sending J.J. Berrios back down to AAA so he can dominate minor league hitters some more has no value any more to the team.

I saw teh video of his season opener and he looked like Doc Gooden/Dave WInfield going out on that mound. My initial thought would be to avoid the HS pitcher, but after looking at taht his physical athleticism on the mound is just intimidating. He is the obvious #1 pick for the Twins. If I am the Twins I am also moving him swiftly up the minors.

The real malpractice the Twins have done with Jorge Polanco was that they left him in the minors in the first place. The kid hit minor league pitching, they bring him up as a 20 year old and he hits. Sure, small sample size but why send him back to the minors? The mistake the Twins have made these past 6 years is to believe that development cannot happen at the major league level.

But you aren't taking 30 PA of rookie ball. First, you are taking the stats of the DSL, not the Gulf Coast or Appalachian Leagues. Second, you aren't taking the "30 PAs", you are taking the overall statistics of 30 plate appearances. Third, the video in your post showing Javier in the batting cage, which would be recent, demonstrates the same batting mechanics he is showing in the batting cage in the video I posted. In the batting cage he makes pretty good contact because there isn't changes in velocity or plane. He can time his movements. But put him in a real game without the ball coming at the same speed and position, he is way off balance. I am sure that at lower levels, like the DSL, he probably can have some success with these hitting mechanics because he has tremendous bat speed. If the pitcher makes a mistake or he guesses right, he will club the ball. But if he continues this approach he is going to struggle even in the GCL and will consistently have very poor ABs. Unfortunately, these are not minor tweaks. His stance, his initial hand and elbow positions, the leg kick and weight transfer all need to be changed if he is going to be successful at higher and higher levels of ball. Some prospects can do it, some prospects cannot. I think that he has some natural skills that could lend themselves to making these adjustments. He has the bat speed and natural swing power. Also, he is an above average fielder. If he adjusts to coaching and gets better control of the strike zone, I think he is a prospect.

Over 30 pa in the DSL...... Watch this video. His contact is poor. His power is poor. I think if a pitcher is going to make a mistake pitch into his wheelhouse and he times it then with these batting mechanics he might make decent contact. The problem is, even in the Rookie League he is going to fact pitchers that do not make those mistakes except in rare occurances. I stand by my position, unless the Twins successfully change his hitting mechanics he has no chance of being a major league player and he would not have much success past A- ball.

Sorry, if you look at the other Javier video, not just the batting cage one, his swing is completely messed up. While he has very good bad speed, his balance through his swing is very poor. In actual game pitching his contact was mimimal, ticking pitches into the ground, and he lunged without power to make any contact. The lunging means that he is going to have a difficult time against even low level minor league breaking pitches because his "swing commitment" happens very early in his approach. He is going to weakly swing at a lot of breaking balls at least early in his career. Unfortunately the Twins minor league staff is going to have to completely tear apart his swing. They need to balance his intitial weight better and get him to keep more of his weight back at contact. If he maintains that lunging approach with all the foot movement he does not have a chance of being a major league player.

This is a problem within the Twins organization and it has been for a long time. One of the reasons for "logjams" is that the Twins will not trade a minor league prospect. If you analyze trades one thing you will realize is that the trade value of minor league prospects are highly inflated. Look at the trade rumors surrounding Dozier. If the rumors are true, the Dodgers basically would not offer more than DeLeon for him. DeLeon is a pretty good prospect, but 1-1 for Brian Dozier? The Dodgers did trade him for another 2b 1-1 which still shows the inflated value of prospects. Second, the Twins methodical and (overly) conservative approach to minor league development and preference for mediocre waiver wire/offseason signing veterans over their own prospects helps create this logjam. the obvious reason for this is that the Twins organizaiton is too cheap and too conservative, as well as being too frightened to make a bad trade where the prospect we trade develops into a good player. If you want to have a truly successful organization (winning the AL Central is not enough), you have to utilizat all of the value in your organization. This means identifying the good prospects from the bad and trading away the bad but overrated prospects at inflated prices.

I am going to repeat some of the observations I have made on Stewart. 1. The comment about being competitive made above is very true, but he might be too emotional. IF something goes wrong out on the field he comes back to the dugout angry. I remember one time Stewart coming off the mound, talking to Gonsalves and Smith, just totally emotional. Stewart walks away and Smith and Gonslalves were laughing. 2. The problem with his K-rate is his slider. His command of his fastball is excellent, and he has 92-94 velocity. His slider could be a very good out pitch but right now it does not have enough vertical (it doesnt have any) movement so batters are able to get their bats on it. 3. Because of his command of his fast ball and change, hitters do have a very hard time making good contact on him at the A+ level. He can put the ball inside and out, and hit all the zones. A+ hitters struggle to get good timing and the hardest contact these guys make against him are change ups they are way out in front of. 4. His curveball is a secondary pitch in his arsenal and I think it can one day be a plus pitch. Right now it is a flux pitch and he doesnt throw it often. When he is on, the hitters are frozen. The problem is that his mispitch rate on the curve is 50+%. Stewart's upside in a MLB rotation depend on the slider. AS someone above noted, I think a lot of it is his arm slot on delivering the slider. I think he can adjust a bit to give his slider more bite. I also wonder if the Twins are delaying this to try to prevent injury to his elbow in throwing these tighter sliders. If he gets command of his slider to the level of his fastball/change, he can be a #2 pitcher in the majors. If he figures out his curve, he has a chance at a 3-4 spot. His ERA and total production show the command of the basic pitches, but without the slider or even a curve, major league hitters will be able to get much better contact than the low minor league guys he has faced.

Wouldn't it be nice, for once, to be a fan of a team that didn't make their decisions based on $50,000. The best player in the Rule V draft is X, we have the pick, so we take that player rather than play these games. I have a friend whose father in law had a high level position in the organization. His MLB peers made fun of him because almost to the end of his long career he had to share hotel rooms with other staff. The Twins would also make their upper management fly commercial coach. I once sat 2 rows behind Ryan and Bill Smith on a Sun Country flight. Ryan was still the GM. A harbinger of the failure of Bill Smith probably was observed on that flight. Ryan studied computer printouts the entire 3 hour flight, every once in a while waking Smith up from his nap. THe Twins are and always have been a cheap organization.